Tag: home

by Brian Weston

From my vantage point I have a view into your world.
Your life history. Page by page. Every morning you are the first one awake. At 6:30 you open the back door and let the dog out.
You don’t like the dog. The dog doesn’t like you. You are not its master.
When the morning sun is out you raise your head up into the rays. You immerse yourself in its warmth. For a second you look. Happy.

Then chaos ensues as the rest of the house awake.
In the madness you blend into the background. Invisible in your own house. But I see you. You go to say goodbye to her. She recoils as you move closer. Eventually letting you kiss her on her cheek. She swats your arm away like a fly as you try to caress her. You wander out of the house, looking as if you were the one who had a tail to put between your legs.
The house breathes a silent sigh of relief.

She potters about the everyday mundane that nobody likes to do. At 1pm, Tuesday and Thursday her lover slithers into your house. They could not be closer. Passion and lust in equal measure. They make love on the kitchen diner floor. The new flooring that you laid last Bank Holiday weekend. By yourself. On your own. Alone.

I feel sick for you. I feel hurt for you. I want to tell you. I know if I told you it would not hurt as much. But I am not allowed. Those are the rules. My stupid rules.

Thirteen hours later you return. You move around the room like a considerate intruder. You even pierce the film on the microwave meal as quietly as possible, just to ensure you don’t wake anybody from their slumber. Always kind, always thinking of others.
You start to eat. After a few mouthfuls you raise your head. Chewing, you survey your domain. When you finish chewing you still keep looking around the empty space in the room. You look lost.

Alone. I feel a tear roll down my cheek.

Every morning you are the first one awake. At 6:30 you open the back door and let the dog out. Today you stand in the morning sun. With your arms outstretched it looks like you are trying to hug the sun. I share a smile with you.

Brian Weston is a nervous newbie writer. Loving writing and hope to find people that love what he writes. Alan Bennett is his hero. With Brian Bilston a close second.

“That crazy cackling? Her huge, crooked nose? The black rat’s nest on her head? Slap some green face paint on her and she’d be a dead ringer for the Wicked Witch of the West.”

Keagan tries to cheer me up with a Harry Potter reference. “Should we buy her a broom and make her fly away? Maybe a Nimbus 2000?”

“And waste, like, a thousand galleons on her?”

“You’re right,” he says. “I’d much rather spend all our galleons on butterbeer.”

The next evening, we opt for board games in our kitchen, as it’s usually quieter in there. We’re not playing for five minutes before we hear the bass-filled bray of the witch’s husband.

“Wow,” I say. “He literally sounds like a hungry donkey.”

“Maybe we should feed him,” Keagan says, blowing on the dice superstitiously.

“What do donkeys even eat?”

In the name of research, my boyfriend pulls out his phone. “Looks like… grass… berries… and bark.”

“Well, we don’t have any of that. Too bad they don’t eat ramen or chocolate pudding.”

Later, Keagan and I stand in our bathroom, brushing our teeth and thanking our lucky stars that the only sound beneath our feet is the roar of the neighbors’ shower. But then it starts: the revolting grunts and wails of sex that’s desperate to be heard.

“Oh my god—EW!” I practically throw my toothbrush into its holder and flee into our room.

My boyfriend joins me in bed. “My god,” he laughs. “It seriously sounds like a witch and a donkey mating!”

We pull the covers over our heads and watch YouTube videos on my tablet until we both fall asleep.

Around two a.m., we’re both jolted awake by the cries of the baby downstairs. Angry, we smash our pillows into our heads.

At three a.m., the baby is screeching. My anger has dissolved into a brand of concern that only women know. “Why don’t they just feed him? I legit have milk coming in just listening to him!”

By 4 a.m., the baby is issuing horse, ragged shrieks every few minutes.

Tears in my eyes, I whisper, “This is awful.”

Keagan mumbles unintelligibly and rolls over. How on earth can he sleep through this?

My heart aches for the neglected soul downstairs. “He’s confused and scared down there,” I say wetly, perhaps overly fraught due to lack of sleep. Why I haven’t heard the baby’s parents stir or speak once is beyond me. Lord only knows they have no qualms about making their presence known any other time of day.

Three hours later, the alarm on my phone rips me from a dead sleep. I drive to work and move through my blessedly short shift in a bleary-eyed haze. During my commute home, I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to nap a few hours before Keagan, who has showings until six today, returns.

The donkey and the witch will be at work, I reason. The baby will be at daycare.
I pull into my building’s parking lot. I am absolutely crestfallen to see the witch’s car, complete with tacky leopard print seat covers and hot pink dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Who the fuck uses neon dice to decorate their car? Are we in a sleazy drug movie from the 90’s? Does this cauldron-stirring hellion run coke at night instead of comforting her screaming child?

Once I’m inside, it becomes obvious that the witch is determined to prove that no, actually, she’s a doting mother. She’s shouting “Peek-a-boo!” so loudly you’d be able to hear it from space. Her exaggerated volume elicits her infant son’s laughter, but it’s the kind that has a hysterical lilt to it. Sure enough, his confused, overtired giggling transitions into sobbing.

So much for the siesta I had planned.

I yank open our broom closet. It’s time to exact some revenge by having a little afternoon vacuuming sesh with the huge, outdated Hoover Keagan’s mom gave us. I take my sweet time, even lifting furniture to get at the carpet beneath it. When I finish, I’m satisfied to find that a quiet stillness has descended upon the building. I lay on the couch and fall asleep almost immediately. Too bad I’m jarred awake a mere ten minutes later by the howling of the pit bull downstairs. Apparently, the donkey has returned home and is howling as well, egging his canine on.

Does no one work nine to five anymore?

I feel crabbier and more tired than I did before I laid down. I stomp into my bedroom and put on my headphones in hopes that I’ll fall back asleep. But all I do is fidget under the sheets, fling off the comforter then pull it back on, prop myself up on pillows then push them to the floor. When Keagan gets home, he lays next to me with his suit still on.

He threads my anger-tossed hair behind my ear. “Rough day?”

“Awful.”

“I have something that might cheer you up.”

Lifelessly, I ask, “What?”

“See for yourself. It’s in my pocket.”

I sigh loudly and throw my forearm over my eyes. “Can’t you see that I’m too tired to play with your boner?”

My boyfriend issues a loud bark of laughter. “Well, I didn’t have a boner before, but all this talk about my boner is giving me a boner.”

I turn away from him.

Keagan gets up, circles the bed, and sits next to me. “Come on. See what’s in my pocket. By the way, perve, I meant my jacket pocket, not my pants pocket.”

I jam my hand into his suit jacket and extract keys. “What are these? Did you buy a new car?”

“They aren’t car keys,” he says, locking eyes with me.

“Oh my god.” I jerk upright. “Are they…?”

“The keys to our new home? Yep.”

“Keagan!” I stand. “Keagan, can we afford a house?”

He chuckles affably. “Of course we can. My commissions have been off the chain and my galleons are piled high. Plus it was a short sale. I practically stole the place, and even better: it’s unoccupied.”

“But… Will I like it?”

“Only if you like walk-in closets, quartz countertops, wood burning fireplaces, and a whole lotta peace and quiet.”

“Oh my god!” I hop excitedly. “OH MY GOD!”

Keagan jumps alongside me. “OH MY GOD, I’M THE BEST!”

We continue pounding around our room and calling out as if in the throes of passion.

Suddenly, there’s a banging below our feet.

“Um, are they taking a broom to their own ceiling?” Keagan asks.

“Thank god we never bought her a Nimbus 2000. That crazy witch clearly already has one.” I climb onto our bed, launch myself off the mattress, and come to a thunderous landing on the hardwood. “YES, KEAGAN! YEEEEEESSS!”

My boyfriend joins in my nonsensical mockery of the witch and the donkey by opening and slamming our dresser drawers while emitting one loud, final moan. When we’re done with our wild celebration, the building is steeped in stunned silence.

“They know there’s no way they can win,” Keagan whispers and pulls me to him. “What do you say we go take a look at the new house, maybe christen it with a few bottles of butterbeer?”

I bring his face to mine for a lingering kiss. “Keagan, I like the way you think.”

A few months later we learn that after we’d left, the police had knocked on our door because of a noise complaint made by the donkey himself. To this day, we have no idea how they were able to decipher the meaning of his pathetic brays over the phone lines.

Sophie Kearing loves drinking coffee, interacting on Twitter, and writing short stories. Her work has been featured by Spelk Fiction, Horror Tree, Ellipsis Zine, Left Hand Publishers, and Moonchild Magazine. She has pieces upcoming in Mojave Heart Review and Jolly Horror Press. Find her on Twitter @SophieKearing.

by Toni de Bonneval

When I was six, I gave up on the God stuff. My sister and I sat, knees clutched. We looked out from the stoop of Dad’s summer cabin, through the clearing to the far side of the valley, to a crouch of blue hills. “Faith can move mountains,” the priest said in the drafty church in the valley. In the kitchen, Dad made scrambled eggs. We sat on the stoop.

“Move.” We were polite, a request. They didn’t. “Move,” this time not so polite. We waited, but the hills didn’t get up, didn’t galumph in all their blueness up the cleared swale from their place to ours.

“Breakfast, girls.” We stood. A final shout, a challenge, “Move.”

After breakfast we went out back to work on our hole to China. We didn’t really believe that. If China was just below us on the other side of the world then people were either standing on their heads or they’d be dropping off.

The still air encloses. The trees are motionless. I’m frightened when that happens. The nothingness. A young plant stirs, tosses its leaves in childish glee. The aspen giggles, while the white birch bows. The old oak doffs its topmost branch. The hemlock shrugs its dolor and observes. I close my eyes and hear the shush of tiptoes in the uncut grass.

Give thanks.

Toni de Bonneval earns a living writing institutional histories and enjoys living writing fiction and short non-fiction.

by Maria A. Arana

I could easily take them from you
change who I am
make you disappear
call you a liar when you see me in your car
sleeping with your husband
picking the kids up from school

You have the things I want

I could easily hide in your basement
file the blocks until they are thin as paper
tip my hat when you come down
wait until you tire of me
bury you with the things in your caskets
cover them with cloths

You have what I want
I could easily take them from you
I could easily hide in your basement
be free
you would thank me after the diagnosis
…if you last that long

Maria A. Arana is a teacher, writer, and poet. She has published poetry in various journals such as Spectrum, vox poetica, and Altadena Poetry Review. You can find her on her website and Twitter @m_a_Arana

by Copper Rose

As the storm clouds gathered and the wind accelerated, Carrie could hold back no longer. The words sprang from behind her clenched teeth. She had been through this too many times before. A storm was brewing, a storm strong enough to rip the flowers from their beds, the branches from the trees, the roof from its rafters. And there he was again. Thunder cracked overhead and a gust of wind sucked at the windows, rattling the glass in the casings.

Carrie yelled into the dining room. “This time, Conrad, you’re coming to the basement with me instead of sitting in front of the dining room window like you always do!”

Carrie cocked her ear, listening. The only sound was the moaning of the wind.
Carrie screamed louder, “Only a crazy man would want to sit out this kind of storm in front of the dining room window!”

Again, the only sound was the wind whistling in through the cracks around the door. Carrie raced into the dining room. “It’s like you to just sit there, but not this time. There’ll be no arguing. You’re coming with me, mister.” Carrie raced down the stairs with Conrad in tow. Midway to the bottom she stopped.

Just like that.

It was wrong, what she was doing.

“I’m sorry, Conrad.”

She trudged back up the stairs, lips pressed tight as the great wind howled and threatened. She slid the urn full of Conrad’s ashes onto the table, in front of the dining room window and then, once again, Carrie raced for the basement, all the while screaming, “There you go! Have it your way, Conrad! I hope the friggin’ house falls in on you!”

Copper Rose perforates the edges of the page while writing unusual stories from the heart of Wisconsin. Her story “Buried in a Book” first appeared in FlashPoint: Inner Circle Writers’ Group Flash Fiction Anthology 2018. Her work has appeared in Night Garden Journal, Spillwords, Soft Cartel and other online webzines. She also understands there really is something about pie.